On Friday evening, I went out to harvest basil leaves from planters on my patio. Friday had been rainy all day, and the early evening was still drizzly. As I approached one of the planters, I noticed a long scat on the flagstones. Even in the relatively dim light, I could see that there was a long pale projection from one end. "Poor animal," I thought, "loaded with intestinal worms." But, on closer inspection, the "worm" turned out to be the tail of a vole that the animal (probably a fox or coyote) had eaten and then very hastily passed out of its alimentary track, completely undigested.
Perhaps even more strangely, when I went out to inspect the scat in better light the next morning, half of the scat was still present, but the half with the vole had disappeared. Some coprophagous animal had taken advantage of an easy (though, to my human mind somewhat disgusting) meal.
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